Sustenance in the form of some kind of pulp that keeps us alive.
I shudder to think where it comes from.
I want to tell Sam no.
Maybe if I refuse to eat, starve myself, the machine won’t try to breed me.
Even as I think this, my gaze flicks to the woman resting on the floor across from my feet.
She is bone thin. So thin, her massive belly looks out of place.
Her belly moves as whatever is growing within her writhes underneath her skin and the little appetite I had is suddenly gone.
Sam jerks me with her elbow. Her arm shakes as she holds the thing out to me.
She is so thin too, I can see her bones. My gaze moves up her arm, knowing what I’m seeing is a mirror image of myself.
But there is one difference between us.
There is still hope in Sam’s eyes.
Her arm shakes again and I know even the mere act of holding out the sustenance sac to me is draining her energy.
Hating myself, I reach toward her and take the sac.
It’s an unappealing light-brown color, like dirty milky water.
Bringing it to my chapped lips, I nip a hole into it and force down the contents.
It’s more like gulping rather than drinking.
I throw it down my throat, the liquid only hitting the back of my tongue as I take it down.
It’s sickeningly sweet and once again I divert my mind from thinking of where it must have come from.
To my left, Mina watches us.
She says nothing, but her gaze speaks volumes.
Pure hatred.
The same that I feel toward this thing that is carrying us.
The gentle sway continues as the machine makes its way across the landscape below and for a moment, my gaze falls beneath us.
It’s funny how quickly things can change.
Down below doesn’t look like the Earth I knew anymore.
More like a world ravaged by war and natural disasters.
How long has it been since the machines arrived?
I don’t remember now.
Days meld into each other. I only know that time is passing because night comes and the sun rises.
Somehow, it feels like time is leaving me behind.
Below is a dry barren land.
Dust has settled over everything.
Buildings have been burned, crushed, destroyed.
Vehicles sit in what were once roads.
Vines and wild plants have started to reclaim what used to be a small town.
Whatever water, trees, vegetation that had dotted the landscape before are now all gone.
Earth has been captured.
It is their world now.
And we are mainly insects in their way.
Sometimes, we spot other machines in the distance, but they are never close to each other.
Even then, one is enough to decimate everything around it.
And humans…I haven’t seen another human below in a long, long time.
As I cross my arms, the woman on the floor groans and grips her stomach.
Oh no.
I don’t realize I whisper the words until they reach my ears.
“Shit,” Sam whispers too.
Her wide eyes meet my own and I am dimly aware that Mina is crawling closer to us.
The woman is left alone on one side as she groans louder.
There is movement in her stomach.
Something large presses against her skin from the inside and my heart drops.
It is time.
As if on cue, the inside wall pulses and I hear the sound we all dread.
The smooth surface above us whirs open and one of those mechanical arms appears.
It’s different from the ones on the outside—the ones it walks on.
This one is smaller but it has no trouble grasping us just the same…if it catches us.
But it’s not coming for us.
We know what it wants.
The woman…she is ready to give birth.
I watch as the arm grasps her around the neck and for a moment, I’m frozen.
One by one, it’s done this.
Taken us.
Bred us.
At first, we’d fought back, tried to get it to stop.
When had we stopped fighting?
The thought energizes me and I’m moving even before I can reconsider.
“Adira!” Sam’s scream doesn’t register. All I can see is the mechanical arm closing around the woman.
All I can feel is my own hatred.
I reach it in a matter of seconds, my arms closing around its claw.
I pull. With all my strength, I pull. But it doesn’t budge.
“Let her go! She deserves to live. We all deserve to live!” The words leave my lips in a scream that echoes in the little chamber. “Haven’t you done enough?!”
I’m hanging on to it and I swear the metal claw goes still for a moment.
And then I’m flying backwards like a fly.
My back collides with the wall behind me and pain shoots up my spine as I fall forward on my face.
I’m dimly aware of Sam rushing over to me, of Mina’s scream, and I lift my head.
Through my blurred vision, I see the arm retreat with the woman.
And then her screams…
We won’t see her again.
But the machine will come back, and it will be one of us next.
Chapter Four
ADIRA
Night has come.
The sun has risen once more.
My body still aches from the latest attempt at autonomy. Freedom.
My gaze adjusts to within the orb as the empty food sac slips from my fingers.
It lands at my feet and I watch as it…disappears into the metal wall.
“Do you think it will ever stop walking?” Sam asks.
Her voice is distant.
She is staring outside the orb too and I wonder if she is having the same thoughts I am.
“I’d like to think so,” I reply, but even that thought makes a strange feeling go down my spine.
When the machine stops walking…what then?
Will any of us be left?
Will humanity, by some miracle, have survived?
Walking. Walking. It always heads towards water. It’ll spend several days sucking it all up, and then it will be off again.
In the time I’ve been in the belly of the beast, I’ve seen it drain seven lakes.
Seven…all gone.
I don’t know what it does with all that water.
I wonder if it takes it all, evaporates it somehow.
Destroys it.
Something tells me that’s not what it’s doing.
But with the water disappearing down below…so is life.
The Earth is becoming dry.
Parched.
We built all basis of life on the single pairing of two chemicals. Two parts hydrogen. One part oxygen.
Water.
When searching distant stars, it was what we looked for.
And I wonder if that’s what they were looking for too?
Is that why they came here?
Is that how they found us?
I stare ahead at nothing.
Not looking at the other side where the Feeders are.
Not focusing on the two other women around me.
Just three of us left.
It is going to end soon.
For hours, the machine walks.
There is nothing to do but sit and be swayed within it, my gaze focused in the distance.
My mind…my emotions…blocked.
I only rise when I spot greenery.
Life.
We are near a forest…or at least, what used to be one, and the machine leaves trampled trees in its wake.
The trees will die soon. Just like everything else.
Sam sees me move and glances down below.